Fertitlity Rates and Prosperity

Singapore’s government (and Mentos was involved in this awkward project) used this ad on their National Day celebrations to encourage people to copulate and increase Singapore’s birth rate. I hypothesized that a low fertility rate (number of children per woman) was not unique to Singapore (though the problem might be more acute in Singapore).

Here’s a plot of GDP vs. fertility rates for all nations. The red dots are the devloped countries:

Clearly the poorest nations have a ridiculously high fertility rate. The red dots represent the developed economies - almost all of which lie below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1